<p>Parent here doing the background reading and research for son's Fall 2010 college entry! Like many, love reading the big fat Princeton Review and similar, but have a question on the formers SURVEY SAYS section that does put me off quite a number of colleges/Unis.</p>
<p>Main putoff is when they say things like: (Often all together!)
Frats and sororities dominate social scene.
Lots of beer drinking.
Hard liquor is popular.
(Almost) everyone smokes.</p>
<p>Yuck. Is this true and accurate? Are so many places still stuck in the 50s? What future does this imply. Oh dear...</p>
<p>I am not sure if everyone smokes, at least not at my daughter's school or at her friends' schools. Hard liquor is more popular because of drinking age and binge drinking. Any school with Greek presence, social scene is dominated by them, and the reason is they are the ones that are organized enough(or has the incentive) to through parties. Schools that do not have Greek life, social life is run by other student organizations. The kids are going to have parties, one way or another. </p>
<p>Every generation think they are different/special, but nothing has really changed that much.</p>
<p>Richard, welcome. We have that same PR book. D was also put off by these comments also, but it is reality. It is a survey, and the answers might be kind of skewed. It is one datapoint to give you a vibe on the school. But yeah, there is a lot of drinking at US schools. The smoking answer doesn't seem to be there for many of the schools D has looked at.</p>
<p>Oldfort's right. Any college that's predominantly populated by traditional-age students (and that's virtually all the very selective ones) will have late adolescents / young adults for whom there are stage-of-life drives for experimentation with intoxicants and sexuality. It's always been there, but until relatively recently it was considered impolite to talk frankly about it.</p>
<p>Thanks all for the welcome and useful feedback. So the 'data' is quite useful, allowing for potential skew and such. Perhaps those colleges with 'Frats and sororities are unpopular or nonexistant' and such may be closer for what my boy needs. But of course, he has yet to get to that 'stage-of-life', and as Oldfort notes nothing has really changed that much. ;)</p>
<p>On issues like the social feel on campus and the predominance of alcohol, yes, I think PR gets it mostly right. Just bear in mind that it's all relative -- there's more drinking at LSU than at Chicago, but that doesn't mean no one drinks at Chicago.</p>
<p>Anxiousmom: Many of the colleges don't have a lot of smoking. I know my DD nixed applying to Reed after she visited and saw how many people smoked...<</p>
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<p>With all the anti-smoking pressures I would think at least smoking is banned within the buildings, like for offices. When we visited Berklee College of Music last year, the insides were smoke-free, but the guide did point out 'Berklee Beach' outside on the roadside where smokers congregated for their fix. :)</p>
<p>Good to hear PR gets it mostly right Hanna.</p>
<p>There are HUGE differences among schools - sometimes schools that might otherwise seem similar in the percentage of students who binge drinking, in alcohol consumption, the extent to which alcohol plays a major role in college life, and in smoking. And, actually, relatively small differences in binge drinking rates can make a massive difference in student perceptions of college life.</p>
<p>We have usually found the surveys to be fairly accurate, though often understated.</p>
<p>I want to stress that when I praise PR, I'm specifically talking about lifestyle and cultural questions. Their surveys about selectivity, academic intensity, library quality etc. are total bunk.</p>
<p>One way to double-check the impact of Greek life is to look at participation rates and look at whether the fraternities/sororities have houses where members live in.
At a campus where Greeks are not housed separately, the social impact is significantly reduced.
In contrast, we looked a school where more than 2/3 of the female students were in sororities.</p>
<p>Please remember that members of fraternities and sororities only join so that they have to the opportunity to heal the poor, clothe the sick, and feed the naked.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Please remember that members of fraternities and sororities only join so that they have to the opportunity to heal the poor, clothe the sick, and feed the naked.
<p>Survey says.... I have visited 3 schools where "almost everyone smokes" was noted and I did find it to be true. I also check out the number of Greek Organizations and percentages of students that join them. If the numbers/percentages are high & it says that the Greeks dominate the social scene, D#3 found that to be a big turnoff & more or less eliminated that school from her list of possibilities. </p>
<p>D#1 was at UCONN (they love to party) but the Greek scene did not influence the social life of the university. The Greeks lived in University owned property called "Husky Village" I believe. So in a situation like that, there probably aren't any "Animal Houses". I do love that movie, it always makes me laugh!</p>
<p>Wow. Most excellent feedback all. So pleased I asked what seemed a silly question at first, but much better prepared now for upcoming visits and selections this year. So sad to hear smoking still prevalent for many youngsters. Damn those baby-bouncer lobbyists and others! :( Luckily I got through the 60's and never picked habit up.</p>
<p>I think you have to take PR ratings with a huge grain of salt. </p>
<p>For example, 6 or so years ago I was working at University X and it was rated as having having the unhappiest students, the bleakest social life, etc.</p>
<p>The next year it was #2 for the happiest students, the livliest party scene, etc.</p>
<p>What happened in 1 year? Did the entire culture of the university change?? No!</p>
<p>What happened was that a relatively small group of students made a concerted effort to change the rankings by stuffing the ballot box of the survey PR distributes (or however they get their feedback from students). </p>
<p>While PR is a fairly good source of campus culture information, you do need to critically assess their rankings (and all rankings, for that matter).</p>
<p>Those are not scientific survey results. They have a common problem every year, about which I have prepared a FAQ: </p>
<p>VOLUNTARY RESPONSE POLLS </p>
<p>One professor of statistics, who is a co-author of a highly regarded AP statistics textbook, has tried to popularize the phrase that "voluntary response data are worthless" to go along with the phrase "correlation does not imply causation." Other statistics teachers are gradually picking up this phrase.</p>
<p>Sorry Kim, but it just aint so. Voluntary response data are <em>worthless</em>. One excellent example is the books by Shere Hite. She collected many responses from biased lists with voluntary response and drew conclusions that are roundly contradicted by all responsible studies. She claimed to be doing only qualitative work, but what she got was just plain garbage. Another famous example is the Literary Digest "poll". All you learn from voluntary response is what is said by those who choose to respond. Unless the respondents are a substantially large fraction of the population, they are very likely to be a biased -- possibly a very biased -- subset. Anecdotes tell you nothing at all about the state of the world. They can't be "used only as a description" because they describe nothing but themselves.
<p>The entire Peer Ranking system of USNWR, the cornerstone of their entire ranking mechanism, is based on voluntary response data. But it is actually worse than that for, whereas in the case of Princeton Review, the voluntary responders actually attend the institutions for which they are providing feedback, in many cases the peer reviewers in USNWR have never even seen the institutions for which they are providing rankings.</p>